Semantics of 'Feelings'

Feelings are technically responses of the nervous system to stimuli. The degree of feeling is determined by the amount of sensitivity of a specific nervous system.

Throughout the history of mankind we have had to deal with an apparent conflict between survival and emotional honesty. Successful functioning has seemed to be the result of self-control and on a parallel plane, social control.

The relationship of individual repression to the evolution of society seems clear and comprehensible. As each of us, in response to our physical and emotional needs, related to one and other and thus formed societies, we found it practical to be political in the manner in which we presented ourselves. We developed tact, and dissimilation and hypocrisy. We needed primarily to protect ourselves. This conflicted with our need to share ourselves, to be intimate. What has happened is that the conflict has been accepted generally as a natural law, rather than a resoluble problem.

I am not trying to suggest that foresight be abandoned, nor that I think it irrelevant to consider the effect of one's actions, nor that successful functioning within society is insignificant or undesirable. I do think that the conscious acceptance of repressed response or a "flat response" to stimuli is both self-destructive and universally destructive.

I also think that there is a correlation between response and impulse and that fear of indulging an impulse often prohibits recognition of it (and of the response that was part of it). If we had greater genuine trust in our mediating systems, in our own discretion, in our own reasons for determining whether or not any specific impulse should be acted out, we would not have a problem. But because a small repression escalates into a large taboo, what we have is wholesale distortion, and a breeding ground for fascism--or not many examples of minds that function by really satisfying themselves about how they really feel about anything.

We have at the same time an abdication of the right to feel (and thus, to be as happy as possible, since pleasure, happiness and feeling are analogous--feelings can be good or bad, but neither good nor bad, or pleasure or pain exist without feeling) and an abdication of the responsibility of a good citizen toward his fellows, for a human being who is desensitized cannot assimilate information unbiasedly and therefore cannot honorably make decisions.

Without literally feeling as much as we can, we automatically prohibit old mental sets from changing into new--we guarantee ourselves the perpetuation of an existence which we know--we are safe from the unknown both within us and around us. We cannot deal with crises because we are afraid of being overwhelmed-of losing track.

Therefore, I think that all human beings owe it to themselves to consider that any rigid determination to intervene with a mediating force between their immediate response to a situation and their desire to follow through will result in a barricade between themselves and their environment--a wall between themselves and those they love or want to love--a gradual loss of use of the senses in order to prevent the experience of a possible surprise. Surely we can place our security in a little jeopardy in order to allow the possibility of seeing more and feeling better.

Time is really so simple. It keeps on passing by. If we can just stay still enough to work with it, it seems to me that we will save a great deal of energy, and that rather than progressing for the sake of progress, we can progress with a sense of direction. If we keep functioning frenetically, we will continue to live in a series of civilizations which we all acknowledge would seem more absurd than admirable to a detached observer.

Because of our enormous dependence on language we have become somewhat fixated on it. The whole body is really a responsive mechanism that feeds the brain. Language should not be our only source of information, nor, obviously, our only method of communicating.

Nor should we only "think" in words. If we do, we are limiting our options, our goals, our ability to conceptualize, to make abstractions; in the real sense, to progress.

Human attributes, human behavior, all our characteristics are only definable in comparative terms--even genius is a relative thing--freedom of thought (intelligence) is a developable resource.

NOTE: What makes it all so difficult is that socialized human beings (the only kind there is) are capable of holding discordant ideas in their minds. Most of us do this in a fragmented way; we hold one idea, and then shift to an alternate one when convenient. When we're lucky or conscientious or moral we realize that that's not satisfactory, that we should try to reconcile these ideas. Or be aware of the coexistence of both idea, that is, articulate to ourselves and others that they each exist, though discordant or seemingly so, rather than shifting back and forth. This rampant tendency to 'fragment' exists particularly in terms of an inchoate awareness of the conflict between responsiveness (feeling) and appropriate actions. Feelings are so big, so varied, so complex, and so contradictory . . . actions must be tailored for survival. Thus the knowledge of the unconscious predates Freud and modernity, but has gained momentum with time. The person who does try to reconcile ideas, no matter how frustrating, has a flexible and chaotic personality. Chaotic in a sense; that many things may occur to him, many things may occur to him, and he may not be able to organize them.

Further note:

The point of this essay can be approached slightly differently, or at a different angle. Information is something we cannot avoid acquiring, so long as we live. Our senses respond to the world. The goal of avoiding repression is important. Conceptually, to do so, a good tool is acknowledgment of the fact that emotions are informative, but are not data. Emotions, or what is generally meant by ‘feelings’, are states of mind that embroider facts. They are neither valid not invalid; feelings are digressive.

It is of great importance that we not identify with emotions. Feelings traverse the body and mind and resolve nothing. Informed, let’s say, by the loss of a person of great significance to us, we are likely to feel sad, lost, empty, and alone. What the feelings do is reassure us that we are responding in a recognizable way. The feelings do not really reflect the pain directly, nor do they measure them. If we can let them go, that is, if we can avoid identifying with them, we will be left with the stark facts, like a kind of violin, nervous, elegant, inescapable. I have reached a point at which the effluvia of grief leaves me kind of cold. I am impatient with what seems to me now to be sentimentality. I see myself, overwhelmed, banging walls, shrieking, and the drama seems like a necessary or inevitable but essentially meaningless set of gestures.